Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The Ministry of Defence is reviewing compensation claims for service personnel suffering from multiple war wounds after an outcry over a soldier who was awarded payment for only three of his 37 injuries.

That's right, they pick the three worst injuries only when assessing compensation. Why? What earthly reason is there for that? Why three? Why not two, or seven, or five? It's surreal:

[His mother] added: “I wouldn’t have made a fuss if he had been given the maximum compensation, which is £285,000. But to be granted an award at that level a soldier has to be a paraplegic and blinded and to be in a persistent vegetative state.”

Well, I bet he's just wishing he were a vegetable. Who is her son?

Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson, 23, who served in southern Afghanistan with the 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, lost both his legs and suffered serious head injuries when a landmine exploded in Helmand province last September.

I'm so deeply grateful for Lance Bombardier Parkinson's service, and I say he's worth a hundred of the penpushing timeserving jobsworths who came up with this piece of shit of a regulation. No, a thousand. No... no number of worthless, smug, treacherous tossers can balance the scale against a paratrooper.

This isn't an isolated incident. The British establishment makes a point of betraying people who give us service. Peter Wright only wrote Spycatcher because the pension he was promised after joining British Intelligence from Marconi was reneged on. Klop Ustinov died in poverty, selling his books to buy food after giving great service to Britain during the Second World War.

More recently, we've had the case of Ghurkas whose bags I'd be proud to carry being refusedvisas to live in the country they have served with such extraordinary distinction. On what fucking planet does it not GO WITHOUT SAYING that if you're good enough to die for us, you're good enough to live with us? In the case of the Ghurkas, the question is, are we good enough to live with them?

Then there are the Iraqi interpreters our contemptible, parasitic political establishment are happy to turn over to the Islamist psychopaths in Iraq, to have their eyeballs, elbows and kneecaps pulped with electric drills before being executed, despite the fact that their services allowed these wankers to smarm on about how our experience in Northern Ireland made our troops better than the Americans, who incidentally are now winning hearts and minds in Iraq while our troops try to hide from the incoming mortars under their camp beds in Basra because they lack the political, logistical and physical support to succeed - because they are denied it by bespoke-suited buffoons who are too busy wiping grease from their chins in expensive restaurants to worry about what a squaddie from Newcastle might need. Mind you, there are a lot of chins to wipe, per person, so maybe we can understand their being a mite preoccupied.

We can, and should, try to help the interpreters, and I really do hope you'll click that link and pester your MP if you're British - and if you're not write to one anyway and tell them how this country is held in contempt by others for this disgusting betrayal.

But what should we do with the British establishment? It's tempting, I know, to say they should be swinging from the lampposts. But that would be very, very wrong.

If we did that, we'd still have to look at the fuckers. The answer is to put them all in sacks, tow them out to the middle of the Atlantic, and cut the ropes.